Innovation, Design and a bit more from Thailand

When we lived in Laos we were hungry for design and often went to Thailand since this was the place to go for good and modern design in South-East-Asia. It certainly influences neighbouring countries. At the recent Thailand and Innovation and Design Expo at QSCC you got an idea about contemporary Thai design. And I like to talk  about design first, because the innovation part was not always so convincing.

The event is organised by the Department of International Trade promotion and the Ministry of Commerce, and as expected only few we met spoke English. Even the event flyer is mainly in Thai, and I witnessed two potential buyers struggling to communicate with the Thai seller.

But if there is a will there is a way, so we had a good time and got most of the information we were asking for. When it comes to furniture you can get really good stuff here, well manufactured, using best wood, and with creative designs.

 

Something are innovation and design, but still well done. One is a pet coffin, and the other thing is a rescue hood, that has two bottles with breathable air attached. Something anyone living in a condo should have.

Also quite nice was a toy kit that is kind like lego, just made out of plastic straps that can be put together using screws. You can even create moving 3 D objects with it. Well done and it looked like good quality too.

Supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is a research project that aims to improve toilets. Students in the NATS project did actually a lot of research with wastewater management and invented three solutions for homes. The most sophisticated one separates the liquides from the non-liquid parts, disinfects them by using bacterias and even getting some cooking gas out of it. 

And then you could see some fails. One is a water faucet that will automatically recognise that you want get water out of the tab. I may have misunderstood the invention, but it looked quite, lets say, weird.

The next pictures shows a robot that is made to get autistic people into communication. It basically replaces the human factors and counts on curiosity of the patients to explore the thing. Personally I though a bit more thinking about the guys design would have done no harm.

And finally just some more pictures:

Craftsmanship fair: modern design of the young Thai generation

For some reasons expats seem to prefer to go to new restaurant openings and roof top bars more than to more local events, because I haven't seen too many foreigners at BIG or the recent craftsmanship fair ay BITEC. With this blogpost I hope to help increasing the number at least for the next event: The Thailand Innovation and Design Expo 2014, 18.-21. September, Queen Sirikit Convention Center

So what are those fairs about? Mainly designer stuff from young Thais who are entrepreneurs, business people, artists. They produce organic salad, wooden beds or small houses. Below you will find a selection of exhibits I have seen at the recent fair at BITEC (that's a convention center that is actually accessable by BTS, via Bagna station). One product I like is De La Lita, a salad dressing. Well designed, fresh made, incredible delicious. They do everything right regarding marketing and distribution: A Facebook page www.facebook.com/DeLaLita.recipes, a website www.delalita.com and you can buy the products at Tops, Villa Market and Gourmet Market. Try the basilica dressing, its awesome.

Something very different and on a larger scale is Homes at Home. They are selling houses - made of wood, rather small, but also inexpensive. Sunshine 9, the big one, costs 30.000 USD. It is build in a few days, out of wood from New Zealand. They claims it is termite safe. You can see their products at www.facebook.com/homesathome.fanpage

Since we all want to be more independent mushboom might be a solution for growing your own mushrooms. It comes in a kit in a paperbox, more information on https://www.facebook.com/mushboomkit


Amantee makes finest french style bread, only the shop is quite in the middle of nowhere in 10120 Chongnonsee - Yannawa. Their webiste shows some products. We tried the fig bread and can only recommend it.

Some more impressions below.

Thailand in Transition

I found a quite interesting article in the Bangkok Post, describing the different states of development in the Asean countries.

As you can see Thailand is efficiency driven, but not yet in the transition status to become an innovation driven economy. I am wondering how many years that will take, because right now there are only little signs of innovation. Thailand is quite good in executing/producing, as the hard disk, automotive and camera manufacturing shows. It does have a huge service sector as well, 52 percent of the GDP. Wikipedia lists the sectors:

Automobiles and automotive parts (11%), financial services(9%), electric appliances and components (8%), tourism(6%), cement, automanufacturing, heavy and lightindustries, appliances,computers and parts, furniture,plastics, textiles and garments, agricultural processing,beverages, tobacco.

Also, Thailand is spending 4 percent of it's GDP (or 20 percent of the state budget) on education, according to a official statement in January (that might change after the coup):

http://www.mcot.net/site/content?id=52ce01bd150ba0ea6400011f#.U4VS3hQayK0

So why is Thailand not further developed? I think the answer is in the paragraph above: While spending a lot of money, it isn't spend wisely. Otherwise innovation would be much higher, as you can learn from Singapore, where education is considered the best in ASEAN.

As long as Thailands (and it's neighboring countries) education system is based on transferring knowledge rather that understanding there is little change. Certificates doen't tell anything about your ability, as we learn everyday when we try to speak English with Thai people. 

I visited a science and reserach fair last year and it was emberrassing to see how little science was done there. It looked more like a vocational exhibition. From what I know about software and app development in Thailand, cloning and copying is still considered the best way instead of developing something unique. And if done so, it is most likey to be a local version instead of targeting at least a regional market.

But, the good news is, the situation is changing. I see a lot of young people setting up small businesses, from coffee shops to bicycle dealers, having the entrepreneural spirit that is required for a society to develop further and cross borders of traditional ways of doing business. 

So, let's hope the coup and the currrent crackdown on critical thinkers doesn't last long and Thailand can go back to business as soon as possible. And someone start's questioning the curriculum and the education of teachers.